Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Lucky for me, right on the heels of my pre-holiday breakdown, came some well-timed comic relief.

As I was putting Ellison to bed, she naturally wanted to read with me. I grabbed a chapter book off of her shelf called "The Higher Power of Lucky". It was a Newbery Medal Winner. Guh-reat! We hadn't read that one yet, and frankly I was a tad bored of mimicking what I thought Junie B. Jones' voice sounded like.

Here we come, warmth and fuzzies! Let us wind down together, darling daughter...

{An excerpt from Page 1}:

"Sammy told of the day when he had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked '62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum."

So much for dewdrops and lollipops.

Too tired to discuss scrotal and/or alcoholic implications with my seven year old, I stared into her elfin-like face and mentally begged her just not to ask. Too tired. Too tired.Too tired.

The "I'm overwhelmed" holiday breakdown came a little early this year.

Expectations of the morning pulverized. Kids hadn't practiced the piano before school. Again. Scriptures not read over breakfast. Again. Lunches not made for kids. Again. Gym clothes sidelined.

Again.

(For an outfit perhaps better suited for the school Book Fair).

Seven pounds gained.

A smattering of various other shortcomings magnified. Forgetting to pick up Ellison at piano lessons was a particular lowlight of the week. "Mom, are you ever coming to pick me up?" was the exact phraseology.

I was a puddle of tears sitting on the stepstool in my closet by 8:30am.

The tears were cathartic. The self-flogging over in five minutes.[Twenty, tops].

The thought bubble over my head might have read: "Maybe I will attempt to sausage myself into Caroline's spandex mermaid tail and go swimming. Then surely things would look up..." (?)

Moving on.

Post edit: After deeming the morning utterly unsalvageable, I mumbled something under my breath in the general theme of "I quit" and went back to bed until noon. Thankfully there was a Bubble Guppies marathon on for Charlotte.